Interview with Craig Baldwin
I'm very sceptical of these new media revolutions
just so you know...
The video revolution came out and very quickly
that was turned into America's home video,
everything was shot by people who were in their homes,
same thing happened with youtube,
twenty years ago when a video camera came into people's hands,
and what they shot is basically...
their cat getting drunk, you know what I mean,
and that's fine
but how many billions of cats getting drunk do you want to see
so, that's for me, a cartoon version of the absurdity
I'm not asking for there to be an avantgarde group of people
who will lead the viewers,
but I'm just saying people should step up to the challenge of youtube
and not just me brush my teeth, brush my cat's teeth, whatever...
and so what?
Anyway this is an issue about utopia and dystopia,
it is a central issue,
I don't want to say I'm utopian or I'm dystopian, that's silly,
the onus is not on some technological...
there's been a million technological developments that failed
all of which could have produced some kind of change in society.
Look at radio, you have internet radio, sure,
you have micro-broadcasters, sure, but in the same period of time
the 80s and the 90s, you have massive consolidation here in the US with Clear Channel
in the same period of time.
So you might say...
well the group of people listening to 'alternative' rock or whatever
grew from 3% to 7%
in the same period of time all the people who listen to the jazz stations
jazz - good example - jazz
classical, you know, that 60% of the people,
now they have to listen to
stations that are run by the same corporation.
In other words, half as many providers,
and all their playlists are already set by some committee.
So, yeah, sure, we had cable access
we had UHF don't you know...
We had FM radio, it's all in Specters, another film I made...
What I mean is, this theory has already been shredded
since the sixties, it didn't really...
all these utopian promises were not delivered.
they all ended up in more consolidation, more power.
I don't want to be part of the rush of people
saying that just because we have this or that platform
you know, the ugly past is behind us
because many of the people who control these new avenues of distribution
are in fact corporations, very rich,
they're larger than the television from the generation before
well, they compete now with the television companies
Yeah, you can watch my movies, or your movies for that matter,
anywhere in the world but...
you can also watch anything from Hollywood, just so you know
Yeah, through BitTorrent or Youtube or whatever
digitally you can move a file to China or whatever
but way more bad things are going out than good things
yeah it's like the faucet is turned on more there's more flow,
again, there's no argument there,
but just because you have more flow I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.
It does open up space for other kinds of things
that didn't make it into the flow,
but they're totally diluted, if you ask me,
totally diffused with all the other stuff
there's more commercial messaging, more war,
there's more misogyny.
Don't you see, I'm not a utopian
I'm realistic
Just because we have other means of making movies and distributing movies
it doesn't mean
that the basic conditions of life on the planet
for most human beings will change.
I think it's a good thing for those people who do have access to computers,
who are certainly a minority of people on the planet
and those people who choose to take
access to older work, archives
that's also a very small minority.
And by the way, with copyright, which we haven't really gotten around to
at the same time that there's the proliferation of
platforms for media production, exhibition and distribution
really, in terms of the law
it's clearly, there's no doubt about it, I challenge you...
to come up with any evidence to the contrary
that the restrictions around
what's proprietary material
has become much more narrow,
there's no doubt about it
I can name three, there's the Sonny Bono Act,
this is of course in the United States,
the Digital Millenium Copyright Act
all of these have really acted to
to restrict people to less and less material
which was part of our cultural legacy.
Of course there can be people who use it
despite the copyright legislation
which is precisely the people I keep talking about
the outlaws and the margins
who do things regardless of the wider trends.
This march towards the web
as some possible way out
in the guise again of this utopian...
exercise of free speech so...
I remain unconvinced of that.
There's exceptions, and by the way, they're all subcultural
they're all minorities,
there's not going to be some magic pill
BitTorrent or Youtube that's going to stop the problems
it has to do with human imagination
and critical will, that will do it.
it could be argued that those things make possible and enhance
critical agency
And I'm willing to give that a chance.
I haven't really seen any proof of it yet.
There's plenty of people out there who are watching
the worst kind of soap opera right now
all over the planet
and i can't save them you know
hard as I've tried! I can't save them!
But the thing is, it's not me versus them,
that's not the model anymore, those people will always be there,
Bu the ideas will be carried on by a smaller group of people,
be they activists, or be they anarchists
or be they artists
it's gotta start with an 'A', whatever!
So I'm looking for more of a...
I embrace the democracy but
really it has to with will,
it has to do with consciousness, it has to with a critical point of view
and the critical skills
aren't necessarily there just because we have platforms,
wider bandwidth or whatever,
that's what's going to make the difference for me.